


Tiny Little Shards

by KiraNightshade44



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christopher Nolan vibes, Dark and Gloomy, Devoted Kylo Ren, Diary/Journal, F/M, Mental Illness, Mystery, POV Rey (Star Wars), Reality Bending, Romance, Unreliable Main Character, Violence, dark and gritty, dark themes, mentions of child abuse, mentions of domestic violence, shifting pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiraNightshade44/pseuds/KiraNightshade44
Summary: Rey feels like she has lost pieces of herself her entire life.It started when she was little. She had one friend, an imaginary little boy. His name was Ben but he was only the first. Before long, she began to create more imaginary friends - the others who would come to fill the lonely, empty spaces in her life. They seemingly came alive, in all those quiet hours alone in her room. All seven of them. But when she grew older, they all slowly faded away. Prescriptions replaced each of them, one by one.Until one day, she discovers that they never really went away at all. They're all still here.As Rey battles against her own mind, dark forces converge at every turn, threatening to tear apart her life. And her very sanity.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 9





	1. The Shadowless

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeeeeeere we go again!
> 
> I have been puttering around with this story for a while. It is going to be weird, dark and a thrilling roller-coaster ride, so buckle up kids!
> 
> Journal entries are written in first-person, but the meat of the story is in third. Updates will be slower on this one, I have only just started writing it. :)

**_Journal Entry - November 13, 2020_ **

I woke up with that fucking song in my head again and for one beautiful moment, I thought I was back home with you. That it was fifteen years ago and we were riding around in my shitty car, doing doughnuts in the parking lot of my high school, high on poorly made joints and buzzed on my dad’s swamp-water beers while we were screaming the lyrics to that fucking song like a couple of lunatics. 

And you know what – it took me way longer than it should have to realize where I am now. In this shitty apartment, with a head that feels like it's been stuffed with cotton. I don’t like the lithium anymore. I keep getting weird heart palpitations and I feel like someone has sucked all the vitality out of me. Like I am being leashed. 

Contained. 

But Doctor Snoke insists on it. He knows best, I guess. 

He would not like it if he knew I was still writing to you. I am not even sure why I still do it, to be honest. I just… miss you. Even though you were a “coping mechanism” as the shrink likes to put it. 

What we had always felt so real to me, though. But maybe that’s the problem. 

This is not a revelation. It is more like when you’ve been thinking of a word that you cannot remember, caught on the tip of your tongue until you land on it the way a diviner finds water beneath the ground. I remember when you showed me that neat little trick, when I was still a kid and dad would take the family up to the old cottage, like we were a normal family or some stupid fucking thing. 

You were the best part of those trips. You showed me how to divine. 

Take a piece of copper and twist into a fork – and then you have a diviner, searching for those hidden rivers in the ground. I remember the storm that night at the cottage, and how you held me through it, even though I could feel you shaking. But I was only pretending to be scared so I could be brave for both of us. 

I find that funny now. Well, really, I find it horribly fucking sad, but I am trying to stay optimistic. Optimism doesn’t come so easy to me, though. But you know that. Better than anyone, I reckon. 

Somehow, I got promoted at work last week. I did that much. But now that I am here, I don’t know which way to go anymore. The tide is coming in and there is a mountain at my back; a sheer cliff face that I cannot climb. I don’t know which way to go, if I should try climbing, or if I should just lay down and hope the tide drags me back into the sea. 

I wish you were here. I wish for that more than anything, but it’s better this way. 

Maybe I can be normal, or some semblance of that. Maybe, I can finally get by in this world. I miss you terribly, even after all these years. 

Even though you were never really real.

Well, until next time Ben. 

Love Rey. 

*****

The house was painted a charming shade of yellow. Light, like buttercups. 

The trim was a flawless white and so were the frames of all the windows. The driveway was freshly paved and the garden pristine. Even the grass looked perfect, freshly mowed and a healthy shade of emerald. The street was really a crescent, and the house sat roughly in the center, set back behind a pretty white fence and the wide yard dappled with tall oak and ash trees. 

Rey Bedore was instantly on edge. 

Whenever the houses were nice, the calls were always worse. Well-kempt gardens were almost always lies dressed up as pretty fronts. Fresh coats of paint were typically akin to hastily caked-on foundation, covering up cold sores and hollowed out cheeks. The sound the wind made through the leaves of the trees was more like fingers running over a cheese grater than pretty leaves rustling with approaching autumn. 

This house was a lie. 

Rey knew this before walking through the door. The police tape cordoning off the yard from the sidewalk and crowded street, where people were gathered together gawking at the lying house, assured her of this. But there was a feeling below her training and experience; a low feeling of inescapable dread and misery. 

Looking upon those windows, as she walked up the gentle slope of the driveway, was like looking into the eyes of the dead. Black and sightless, with a slight reflection of the outside world that the darkness would never quite be a part of. Terrible things had happened in that house, with its emerald grass and neatly painted trim. Tragedy was like rain-mist on her skin; clinging and inescapable. 

_ You know what you are, Rey? Lightning in a bottle.  _

Rey stopped walking. 

The wind picked up once more, only now there was a bitter chill to it, like winter had opened its slumbering eyes, taken a whiff of the air, and extended one untended claw towards her. Her pulse was doing a curious jump in her neck, quick and rabid like the sudden widening of her eyes. 

How long had it been since she heard his voice, even if only in her head? How long since she had allowed herself to think about him? But that was a silly notion. She thought about him  _ always _ . Every morning when she woke up, she wrote her little journal entries, which were more like open letters. 

Letters of madness, she now knew. 

Rey looked up at the house and remembered where she was. There were victims she had to interview, brochures and resources for counselling she had to hand out, and silent and scrutinizing checklists she had to run through to assess risk. She had a job to do and…

_ Not everything means something.  _

“Right,” Rey whispered out loud, to no one and nothing. Her heels clicked against the pavement as she finished her journey up the driveway. In the corner of her vision, she could hear the people on the street asking the police officers questions that could not be answered yet. 

That was her job. 

*

Amongst the crowd, a tall dark figure stood slightly apart. The person was male, tall and strongly built. He wore a grey hoodie and dark sunglasses, his mop of black hair hidden and his long, expressive face mostly impassive. 

Had he not been wearing sunglasses, anyone looking at him would recognize the thrill of hunger in his eyes. He was not looking at the caution tape or the red and blue cop lights flashing across the well-manicured lawn. He was not even looking at the house, or talking to anyone around them in speculation of what had happened within. 

The man stared as the young woman walked up the driveway and disappeared within the house. It was likely a good thing that his eyes were hidden right now. Anyone looking at him might have experienced a deep sense of unease with the intensity at which he stared at her. 

But no one seemed to even notice he was there. People only moved out of his way at the last second, like some whisper in their mind had suggested that they step back, or forward, so he could make his way through the crowd. No one so much as looked at him, not even the cops with their grim, watchful eyes. 

The only one who seemed to notice he was there was a small baby in a stroller. The baby watched the man walk past where no one else did and make soft gurgling sounds, reaching out with one chubby hand towards him. 

The man did not look back. His footfalls were silently on the pavement, his passage unknown. He cast no shadow as he walked, even though the sun was out. Soon he turned down a street corner, out of sight. 

Out of mind. 


	2. From These Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resolve - that was all he had for a long time. 
> 
> That and the hope that maybe, someday soon, she would come back for him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daaaaarrrrkkkkkk. 
> 
> Suddenly, in a state of hungover creativity, I decided to add another chap to this story. Updates will still be slow, but this one has some momentum again. This chapter is super dark, yo. Just a friendly warning <3
> 
> Also, some Ben POV :D
> 
> Happy New Years! Here's to a better year!
> 
> (Also switched from past tense to present tense. Oops - one day I will fix the first chapter to match... I blame the hangover.)

Compression - that is how air becomes solid. It happens with precipitation, nearly every minute of every day on the planet. Like the clouds and atmosphere are magicians, that by simply willing air into the concrete existence of rain droplets, it becomes so. 

He feels an awful lot like that right now. 

He is the air and she is the atmosphere, squeezing her mighty fist and transforming him into substance and warmth. With each passing moment, he feels stronger. More present. More real. 

He remembers the total darkness, that endless stretch of black. That void of nothingness. Darkness has been his constant companion for years now. Sometimes, he could hear whispers from the others. Hear their unhappy murmurs, their shrill screams, their insanity. 

He never let any of that touch him. He never let that black tar of madness seep through the cracks. Resolve - that was all he had for a long time. 

That and the hope that maybe, someday soon, she would come back for him. 

But she never did. Not after the doctors. Not after the pills first greyed him out and then swept him away entirely, down and down into the void. He had a name once. She had given him one. She had given him the world. She had given him eyes and hair and a face and all these strange little black and brown dots he has on his skin. 

_Beauty marks,_ he hears like a whisper in the back of his head. _They’re called beauty marks and she painted you with them, all those years ago._

Once, he remembered what colour his eyes are. He used to know all these little things about himself, the way people do. His height, weight, hair colour, favourite number, least favourite food - all of it. She had given him all these little things and then they were gone. 

Then she was gone, too. 

He is not angry with her. He is far too frightened to hold any of it against her. Because, after so long in the darkness, he is suddenly back. Out here, on the outside where light and colours exist. Where she is, somewhere in this place of sound and touch and taste. 

But he is not the only one who has been freed. He just has to find her before the others do. 

He crosses the street, hood pulled up and sneakers tied tight. He has already fallen once when he forgot he had to keep re-tying them when they got loose. Painful scrapes line his palms and he finds himself worrying at them. Picking away the scabs. 

He thinks he saw her just now. Maybe. It’s so hard to know when so much time has passed by, and yet… He would know her anywhere. She is in his blood, his bones. In the itchy scabs on his palms. She is his air and his lungs. 

He’ll stay close by. She needs him, even if she doesn’t remember why. It’s his job to remind her. To protect her, just like he did before. 

To save her. 

*

The coffee table is the antithesis of the manicured front lawn. 

One of the legs is wobbly, causing the whole table to shift like temperamental tectonic plates, swaying drunkenly with the slightest graze. Scattered across the surface of the faux-stained table are an assortment of empty candy wrappers. He seems to favour Wethers, as these golden little leavings cover most of the table like beach treasure. Three different candles in varying states of use sit clustered one the far corner. A lighter sits just within the lip of the one declared “Santa’s Cookie Jar” - a present presumably, as this candle is considerably less used than the others. 

Rey wonders if the candle was a gift from one of the three dead children upstairs, or from his dead wife who sits on the kitchen floor with her head hanging down to her breastbone and a bullet hole in the center of her temple. 

The officers never bring her in when there is a still active crime scene, but normally when these kinds of things happen, the husband shoots himself directly after killing his family. 

That is not the case today. 

The babysitter is still alive, in the master bedroom with Mr. David Finch, and while the Milwaukee Police could have brought in one of their elite negotiators, they have chosen Rey. She has a good track record with hostage situations, despite the fact that she has a Bachelors in Social Work and no policing experience to speak of. The officers like to joke that she has a sixth sense about perps. Privately, she just thinks she is able to empathize with the unempathizable. 

She knows what it’s like to stare down the end of a barrel, though hers have always been of the imagined variety. 

She sits alone in the living room, staring at the messy coffee table with its candy wrappers and peeling vinyl. She has been sitting here for a little over an hour, calmly talking to Mr. Finch through the closed bedroom door. There are officers nearby and she is wearing a protective vest, but that’s about all the protection she has. 

The babysitter has stopped crying. That’s good. It is always better in these situations to give the collapsable less stimulation. Less distraction. 

“I know this feels like a big thing - opening the door. But this is the fastest way to put all this behind you,” Rey says to the closed door. She feels surprisingly calm, all things considered. Seeing the dead wife had not been great and she knows she will be downing pills the moment this is all over but right now?

Calm. Steady. Focused. 

“I can’t.”

She imagines he is balding. That he wears prescription glasses, that he once was the kind of person who wore band t-shirts (unironically) and rode his bicycle to work. She has no basis for this ideation, only the grim tethers of her mind trying to keep her distracted from the fact that there is a fifteen year old girl in the next room who is terrified and just wants to go home to her parents in one piece. 

But she will not follow that tether. Not right now, not when every second counts. 

“David, I know you want to do the right thing. You know it too.”

He is quiet for so long that she _does_ begin to fear a little - not just for the girl, but for herself and the officers down the hall. 

But then:

“That’s all I wanted.” 

David sounds like he might be crying now. She masters her tone into something warm and empathetic, but really she is just repulsed. It is always the houses that look so nice on the outside, isn’t it? Always the houses with the trimmed lawns and the pretty flowers. Always the houses with the nuclear families and the doting father who is just one pink slip away from having a psychotic breakdown. 

Really, though, there is always more to it than that. 

Her degree taught her that, but mostly life has been the greatest teacher of all. She knows about shadows - the ones you think are not following you every day, every night, to and from work, on the car ride home, and in the shower, curling along your toes. She knows about shadows, but she still doesn’t feel sorry for him. Pity is a waste of time. 

Fuck, she is going to need two Olanzapines if she has any hope of sleeping tonight. 

“I just wanted Cici to get her shoes on for school. But… oh God… sometimes she just won’t stop crying and I don’t - oh God, I don’t…”

He trails off after this and Rey is certain she can hear the babysitter make a small sound of surprise. When the bedroom door opens, David throws the gun on the floor and comes out with his hands up. Even then, she finds she is not altogether relieved. 

A headache is creeping up her temples, but she stows that away too. 

She is here for Jessica, the poor fifteen year old babysitter who did not know she was going to witness her clients being brutally murdered before her eyes, and that afterwards, she would be taken hostage by a crazy man who likely has mommy issues and a small prick. That he needs to be needed so badly that he killed his entire family. 

And that after a while, his shadows consumed him whole, taking whatever collateral they saw fit. 

*

Rey peers down at her pill bottle with bleary eyes. 

White wine and olanzapine do not mix together very well, but she is already two glasses in. Two for two - now there’s a joke. 

Maybe she should get some friends. Or a cat. Or a hobby. Or an ever-loving boyfriend. 

She really doesn’t have any interest, or energy, in any of those things though. There is work and then there is the self-induced coma, and then rinse and repeat. Sometimes, she sees Dr. Snoke but his visits are almost perfunctory now. 

Still taking the pills - check. 

Still sleeping the whole night through - check. 

Still holding those hedges against the shadows - check. 

Still sane - well, it’s all relative. She’s not crawling on the walls and having hallucinations anymore and all her old friends, her _first_ friends, well…

They’re gone. They have been for a long time. Dr. Snoke calls that progress and Rey really just thinks of it as loneliness, but at least she can check off those boxes now. She can function, somewhat, as a normal adult. 

Not like David. Not like Jessica probably, at least not for a long while. 

Rey slumps over on her loveseat, some stiff uncomfortable Ikea piece she has yet to break in, even after almost three years since buying the damned thing, and she thinks again about the tall man she saw right before she went into the house with its cagey shadows and manicured front lawn. 

He was just a man. Some unremarkable spectator to a neighbourhood’s tragedy. But something about him sticks out to her, though she can’t quite figure out why. 

_All my old friends - they’re gone_. 

It is a strange thought, but Rey is no stranger to odd thoughts. 

After a little while, she falls asleep on the couch and beneath her eyelids, her eyes are moving. The shadows might be at bay, here on the outside, but in the darkness of sleep they reign true. 

And when she wakes up later that night and stumbles blearily to bed, stubbing her toe along the way, she has forgotten all about the tall man. 

*

But he hasn’t forgotten about her. 

He walks along the mostly empty streets of suburbia, no destination in mind. Just walking along, enjoying the cool night air and watching the streets. He has lost her again. That happens, more frequently in the evenings he has observed. 

He is wondering about that, about the strange numbness that falls over him when six o’clock hits, when he experiences a sudden sharp pain in his big toe. He stumbles on a step, hissing a colourful “ _fuck_ ” into the night air, and as the pain subsides he looks up at the moon and smiles. 

He’s getting closer. 

Then, he pulls up his hood and keeps walking. 


	3. Confetti and Frostbite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she woke up this morning, he woke up too. When she showered, he could feel the water running down his skin. When she brushed a knot out of her hair, his scalp twanged with sharp pain. 
> 
> He needs to see her. He needs for her to see him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have updated the tags to reflect the dark nature of the content. Self-care is super important, so if any of this is triggering for you, venture carefully. I will not get graphic when describing domestic violence - there really is no need for that in the context of this story. But it will be mentioned, so just a heads up for ya'll. 
> 
> And the ambiguousness continues... ;)

_ Journal Entry - November 15, 2020 _

Time isn’t linear. At least, not for me. 

The meds had a lot to do with that I suppose, but I think it was also just the nature of our relationship. The time spent with you was like summer vacation, or Christmas, or birthday parties - a heady concoction of excitement, joy and freedom that felt so fleeting when looking back on it, that I can barely scrape together a coherent memory of you. 

But I remember how I felt. 

I think I was four when we met but it’s hard to know for sure now. It was early morning, long before mom and dad were awake. For a long time, I forgot why I couldn’t leave my bedroom in the mornings. I forgot why I always felt so stuck in those memories of early childhood. Captive in place. 

The door was locked from the outside. 

I know that now. Dr. Snoke helped me root out that trauma. But I still don’t really understand why. 

I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. 

That morning, the sky was still dark with night and the street lamps had yet to turn off. I know because I was looking out my window, barely tall enough to see over the ledge. I wanted to open the window. Not to go outside - it was too fucking cold for that - but just to feel the air. The old radiator kept the room so hot and stuffy I would often get nosebleeds. 

I wanted some air. A taste of freedom. 

So, I got my toybox and dragged it across the floor. It was an old school toybox, made from particle board and cheap acrylic paint. Somehow, I managed to drag the fucking thing across the old worn carpet. Then, I climbed on top and started working on the window. 

But it wouldn’t open. 

I stepped as far back as I could on the toy box and examined the window with all the wondering ingenuity of a girl barely old enough to walk. There was a reason the window would not open - I just had to figure it out. 

The latch. It was the latch. 

Someone had painted over it, but I got it open eventually. By the time I twisted the latch, with paint chips on my fingers and digging into my nailbeds, the sun was starting to rise. I leaned down and began the slow, arduous task of pulling the window up. 

It was heavy. I remember its weight, its resistance. How the tiny muscles in my forearms strained with it. But I was determined now. I had already invested all this time and effort, and I knew it would be a long while before my bedroom door was opened so I could go into the livingroom and watch cartoons. 

A cold blast of winter air filled my room, chilling me instantly. But I was elated. 

Finally, when I had gotten the window open as far as I could, I went down to my knees on my toy box and peered outside. It was cold, brisk and I could see my breath in the air. The street was quiet, even though it would not stay that way for long. The sky began to turned, where small clouds raced across that great expanse in waves of pink and orange. A gust of wind blew by and some snow kicked up, swirling right in front of my window. 

I giggled, reaching out for it with my left hand and that was when it happened. 

The window was not being held up by anything. The building we lived in was old and neglected. Just another welfare ghetto that went through tenants the way call centers do employees. (I would know - I worked at a call center all through university). Since it was cold, the wood of the frame had shrunk and just as I reached for the snowflakes, all glitter and dazzle, the window dropped back down. 

And slammed onto my arm. 

I don’t remember the pain much. I don’t remember if I screamed. I remember crying and fighting very hard to stay quiet. I did not have my mother or father there to comfort me. They were in the other room, sleeping off their party from the night before, and the last thing I wanted to do was wake them. 

So I did something else - something that would come to shape the landscape of the rest of my childhood. Something I had begun to do as a self-soothing technique. Dr Snoke and I have at great lengths about this - but sometimes, I just like to remember it without applying a diagnosis to it all. Sometimes, it’s nice to just think of you as I would any other friend. 

As I cried and clutched my bleeding arm, I created you. 

I stood by my bed and then I hopped up on my bed and pretended I was talking to myself,  _ as you _ . I pretended to be a boy that I sometimes spoke to but really you were just thin air and the product of a wounded girl’s imagination. 

“Don’t cry, Rey,” I told myself, pretending to be this boy. “It’s okay. The hurt will go away soon. It’s okay, Rey.”

Then, I leapt back to the floor, bleeding and still hiccupping. I eyed the window distrustfully and blubbered to distract myself from the pain. 

“It hurts,” I told the imaginary friend that was not there, looking up on the bed where I imagined him to be. “I just w-wanted to look o-outside.”

“I know, Rey. It’s okay. Look - I’ll show you.”

And then…

Why, and  _ then, _ something extraordinary happened. I did not leap up on the bed this time, playing my role as the brave little boy because he was already standing there. And I stood on the floor and gaped at him. 

At  _ you _ . 

You were just a shadow then. But solid and true. You looked like you were made of clay, your features distorted and shifting, almost liquid. Black hair - that was what I gave you first because the boy in my storybook had black hair. The boy and his dragon. 

“You’re here,” I whispered, forgetting about my bloody arm and the searing pain for a moment. 

You jumped down on the floor, but you didn’t make a sound. You just stood there, a shadow-boy with black hair. Even then, you were so tall. So big and strong. And then you reached out, and suddenly there was a bandage in your hand. It didn’t really look like a real bandage, more like something a kid would draw to depict a boo-boo - only I never called cuts and scrapes boo-boos. I always called them  _ bo-bos _ \- a little mistake that my parents never had the energy, or inclination, to correct. 

I still call them that to this day. 

Your touch was cool, gentle. Reassuring. You placed the bandage on my arm, two absurdly large bandaids that crossed in a cartoonish X. Then you stayed there, hovering over me protectively. When your fingers wiped my tears away, I could sense that you were smiling even though I couldn’t see your face. 

Not yet, not on that first day. 

“I’ve always been here,” you said to me. 

We hugged then, in that bedroom with the locked door and dirty carpet, and the freedom I felt was more than a blast of cold fresh air could ever provide. I wasn’t alone anymore. 

Never again after that day. 

*

Rey rifles through her nightstand, searching for her phone charger. She could have sworn she stashed it in her drawer. She encounters her dildo (that she has not used in over a year - lithium is fun that way because you can’t cum no matter how badly you want it), a lighter, some incense and a couple of old cellphones. 

But no charger.

She slams the drawer shut and her journal falls off, having been hanging precariously at the edge of the table. It falls open to yesterday’s entry and she stares down at it for a moment, eyes softening at the edges from her irritated squint, before bending to pick it up and gently placing it on the nightstand, cover closed once more. 

She is just going to have to hope the car charger is somewhere in her Kia. 

Rey flies out of the room like she has springs attached to her heels, grabbing her coat, lunch and purse on her way out the door. She is going to an unusual call today. There has been a murder downtown - one witness left alive. 

Just another sunny day in paradise. 

*

He finds her quickly enough this time. 

When he awoke this morning, tucked under an overpass and shivering miserably from the cold, he felt it. A clash of copper, bitter and revolting in his mouth. But when he spat to get rid of the taste there was nothing there. The blood he could feel in his mouth, viscous and stomach churning, was not his. 

And he knew. They were close. They were hunting. It has already begun. 

This had gotten him up and moving, his fingers numb from the cold and his hair covered in a fine layer of frost. He does not care for the cold. Soon, he will have to find better clothes to brave the weather. 

Milwaukee is fucking miserable in the winter. 

Briefly, he wonders if they are experiencing the same things he is. Cuts, bruises. Bleeding, frostbite. Fucking back pain of all goddamned things. He doesn’t understand how people deal with this all the time, but he isn’t about to complain. 

He has one job to do and he has to get moving. 

He cannot sense them as strongly as he can with her. She and him are like conjoined twins who were brutally separated without anesthetic, or warning. He could feel her along his ribcage, in his limbs, in his heartbeat and bone marrow. It is painful as it is euphoric, filling him with a deep longing that nothing seems to quench. 

When she woke up this morning, he woke up too. When she showered, he could feel the water running down his skin. When she brushed a knot out of her hair, his scalp twanged with sharp pain. 

He needs to see her. He needs for  _ her _ to see  _ him _ . 

And now, he thinks he knows a way…

He watches her park her car and cross the street to where a bunch of police officers have cordoned off a section of the block. There is yellow tape and flashing lights everywhere, onlookers milling about on the streets and taking pictures with those strange black boxes they speak into and stare at for an inordinate amount of time. 

_ Phones,  _ a voice whispers in his head - a voice that sounds a lot like hers.  _ They’re called cell phones.  _

He pulls his hood up, covering his wild mane of unruly black hair, and passes a sunglasses kiosk along the way. He snatches a pair when no one is looking, the lenses black and reflective. They fit when he puts them on and he shoves his hands deeper in his pockets, teeth chattering and heart flutter with nervous excitement. In those lenses, she is reflected there as well; ducking under the tape and greeting one of the officers with a distracted smile. She looks over her shoulder once, her eyes sweeping across the crowd without really seeing anyone or anything. 

When her gaze drifts over him, his skin erupts into pleasant goosebumps. 

Soon. 

*

The crime scene is particularly brutal. 

Rey is no stranger to violence, but this is… Different. The husband lays dead in a pool of his own blood. His hands have been nailed to the floor with a nailgun from the looks of it. The gun is still plugged into the wall and lays on the floor next to the guy as though whoever had done just dropped it on the floor afterwards. On the floor around him are strange oblong circles. They almost look like hearts - the kind a young kid would draw. Messy and imperfect. 

Rey blinks and looks away from them, unnerved. 

She is wearing the little blue booties over her shoes and her hair is one of those ridiculous caps that always flatten her hair and make her sweaty. She isn’t overly warm right now, though. She shivers, teeth chattering. Her fingers feel like popsicles even though she is wearing rubber gloves. 

“Chilly day, huh Bedore?”

Rey looks to her left to see Officer Dipshit - er -  _ Dameron  _ grinning at her. Like they’re standing in line at a coffee shop and not in the middle of a horrific crime scene. 

“Yeah. Can’t seem to shake it off.” Her returning smile is friendly enough, but she averts her gaze before he can reply. 

He has asked her out no less than five times since she transferred to the Milwaukee Victim Services Unit and each time her answer has been the same. He’s handsome and charming, but far too boisterous for her tastes. Besides, she is always suspicious of people who smile as much as he does. 

She bets he is the kind of guy to leave his socks lying around his place. She dated a guy for a brief spat in university who left his socks on the floor - by the couch, in the bathroom, in the fucking kitchen, even. The relationship did not go past a month, but then again, most of her relationships don’t. 

Rey ducks into the living room before Dameron can engage her in conversation. She has a job to do here and it doesn’t include massaging his overinflated ego. 

The wife is sitting on the floor beside the couch, cowering away from the officers who have been trying to coax her outside for the last two hours. They could have taken her by force but in these situations, when she is the only witness to a violent and - from the looks of it - occult type of crime, it is best to keep the witnesses complacent. For Rey, she just wants to ensure the woman is looked after. Trauma of this level leaves lasting scars on the psyche. 

She would know. 

Rey eyes one of the officers and gives them a slight nod. As they start clearing out of the room, she takes a breath and approaches the woman slowly. The room is completely trashed; the table has been thrown across the room from the looks of it and the television smashed into a thousand pieces. Furniture is overturned, garbage littering the floor, and - of all insane things - there is confetti.  _ Everywhere _ . Pink, blue, green, yellow - it covers every square inch of the room. 

_ What. The. Fuck.  _

She has never seen anything like this in the seven years she has been on this job. But that part is not for Rey to worry about. She tunes out the image of the husband’s body and steps carefully over the refuse all over the floor. When she reaches the woman, she notices a strange thing. 

Her fingers are not cold anymore. They feel  _ hot _ , almost like she is holding a cup of hot tea. 

Rey shakes away this strange observation and kneels down to the floor. 

“Hello Mrs. Kovack. My name is Rey Bedore. I’m just here to chat with you, okay? We can talk in here, or we can go outside. It’s completely up to you.”

The woman looks up from where she has been staring at the floor, her entire body trembling and her hair a ratty mess, covered in the same confetti that’s all over the rest of the room. Other than a black eye, she does not appear to be injured anywhere else. 

Rey studies the dark bruise on the skin of her cheek and temple. The bruise has a yellow tinge to it - it’s old. Maybe from a few days ago. 

A trickle of unease goes through her. 

“They…”

Rey meets her eyes again and nods encouragingly for her to continue. 

Huddled next to the couch, with her legs folded under her chin, the woman almost reminds her of a child then. Scared and pulled in on herself. 

Her unease deepens. 

“They knew it was my birthday today.”

Years of training and experience have prepared Rey to react to just about anything with a degree of self control. The clients do not need to see her get emotional or reactive to their trauma. Her emotions are irrelevant in these situations. 

But even still, Rey is surprised. She masks this as best as she can, leaning her weight down so that she is sitting across from the woman on her bottom, leaving them level with one another. 

“Is it your birthday today?” Rey asks gently. 

She nods in reply. 

“And… the people who did this - they knew that?”

Another nod, not quite meeting her eyes anymore. 

“They told me they had a special present for me and then… they sprayed the confetti e-everywhere and when Danny started hollering they - they...” She breaks down into whimpering sobs, trembling like a newborn lamb. She reaches blindly and takes Rey’s hand, curling up even smaller, like she wants to disappear into the floor. 

“Mrs. Kovack,” Rey murmurs, “Did they… were they the ones who did that to your eye?”

She already knows the answer to this, so it is not at all shocking when the woman shakes her head. 

“Danny… when he gets drinking…” She cries even harder, slumping into Rey’s lap and while she holds her and gently rubs her back, that trickle of unease has grown into a tumorous lead weight in her stomach. 

And for some reason, she thinks about that day all those years ago. The day he found her, crying in her room, arm bleeding all over the dirty, worn carpet. 

And how he held her, much she holds this woman now. A life raft in a turbulent storm. 

_ Ben. _

She closes her eyes as though in physical pain, her fingers coffee-mug warm and a pang of homesickness curling up next to all that sullen dread. 


End file.
